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For the past two weeks, coverage of Michael Jackson's death has dominated the news, arguably at the expense of more pressing stories. Bob takes a look at how the media have handled the superstar's passing.
A collective ethical gasp was heard when Politico reported the Washington Post’s intention to hold sponsored salons, during which lobbyists could hobnob with administration officials and Post employees for a price. Washington Post staff writer Paul Farhi, who has been reporting the story, says the salon idea was likely the result of a really bad case of groupthink.
Last month, New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped from the Taliban, which held him hostage for seven months. The Times was able to keep the news of his kidnapping out of traditional media, but it appeared on Rohde’s Wikipedia page almost immediately. So the Times asked Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales to help redact the information. Wales talks about the ethical dilemma.
In 2004, Micah Garen was filming a documentary in Iraq when he was kidnapped by a Shi’ite terrorist group. The kidnappers released videos of Garen, threatening to kill him within 48 hours if the U.S. did not meet their demands. Garen talks about what it’s like when the press does report on your abduction, and discusses whether the media have two sets of ethics: one for their own, and one for everyone else.
Forty years ago the U.S. put a man (well, two actually) on the moon. The landing capped a decade of NASA trial-and-error, Cold War jockeying with the Soviets and negotiating an uneasy relationship with the press. Harlen Makemson, author of "Media, NASA and America’s Quest for the Moon" charts the ongoing coverage of the space program.
Was I.F. Stone a Soviet agent who passed secrets? Or a justly celebrated icon of American muckraking from the left? Jackson Lears, a professor of history at Rutgers University who discussed some newly published claims in the New York Times Book Review recently, says Stone is the victim of posthumous character assassination.
In 1959, with the Cold War in full throttle and MAD the doctrine of the day, Nikita Khrushchev crisscrossed America in a whirlwind circus of a tour, from Harlem to Hollywood. Peter Carlson, author of “K Blows Top,” sifted through the newspapers of the day to piece together an account of the visit.
Highlights from Past Shows
This week, OTM talks about popular cultural myths that refuse to die. The first is a newbie but it seems to have staying power: the rumor that President Obama is a Muslim. A recent Pew study found that many Americans still believe it to be true, and many more simply don't know the President's religion. Political scientist Brendan Nyhan explains how misperceptions spread and says we can be incredibly stubborn in the face of facts.
When ABC broadcast its exclusive health-care-reform town hall meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, one group cried foul. The Media Fairness Caucus, newly formed with some 40 Republican House members, wrote to ABC News president David Westin to complain that Obama wouldn't, couldn't be challenged enough to satisfy them. Both Westin and Caucus head Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas weigh in.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
